The scream of the engine gradually became the screaming of the neighbors. The clanging of the metal walls soon became the sound the gunfire.
Under the shadows of an overgrown tree, Jun an elderly man, in his late 70’s, tried to recall the events that shaped his life. But, maybe because he had tried so hard to forget, he could remember just one moment
1950, October 24th autumn, Northern Korea
Jun woke up to see a mountain load of suitcases pile against the wall next to the weak and fragile sliding door. Confused, Jun walked over to his mother who was frantically walking around the small living room in circles. “The communist raid is coming…… We must leave to receive help, I am just waiting for you sister to arrive” Jun shocked to hear this news, ran to the front door and threw it open, as the glass on Jun’s brothers picture shattered, with an earthquake like shake, a monstrous cloud of pitch black smoke rose above from behind the mountain, which was just a few kilometers away. It was then that Jun spotted a wooden carriage racing down the road. Feeling relief he ran to the ...
It was a village on a hill, all joyous and fun where there was a meadow full of blossomed flowers. The folks there walked with humble smiles and greeted everyone they passed. The smell of baked bread and ginger took over the market. At the playing grounds the children ran around, flipped and did tricks. Mama would sing and Alice would hum. Papa went to work but was always home just in time to grab John for dinner. But Alice’s friend by the port soon fell ill, almost like weeds of a garden that takes over, all around her went unwell. Grave yards soon became over populated and overwhelmed with corpse.
The night was tempestuous and my emotions were subtle, like the flame upon a torch. They blew out at the same time that my sense of tranquility dispersed, as if the winds had simply come and gone. The shrill scream of a young girl ricocheted off the walls and for a few brief seconds, it was the only sound that I could hear. It was then that the waves of turmoil commenced to crash upon me. It seemed as though every last one of my senses were succumbed to disperse from my reach completely. As everything blurred, I could just barely make out the slam of a door from somewhere alongside me and soon, the only thing that was left in its place was an ominous silence.
Chapter one, The Observers, in the Death of Woman Wang demonstrates the accuracy of the local historian; Feng K'o-ts'an, who compiled The Local History of T'an-ch'eng in 1673. The descriptive context of the Local History helps the reader to understand and literally penetrate into people's lives. The use of records of the earthquake of 1668, the White Lotus rising of 1622 and rebels rising vividly described by Feng the extent of suffering the people of T'an-ch'eng went through. Jonathan Spence stresses on how miserable the two-quarter of the seventeen-century were to the diminishing population of the county. The earthquake claimed the lives of nine thousand people, many others died in the White lotus rising, hunger, sickness and banditry. P'u Sung-ling's stories convey that after the loss of the wheat crops there were cases of cannibalism. On top of all of this came the slaughtering of the entire family lines by the bandits. The incredible records of women like Yao and Sun in the Local History present the reader the magnitude of savagery the bandits possessed. All of these factors led to the rise of suicides. The clarity of events Spence given to the reader is overwhelming.
The recollection begins with the author as a boy. His father Rudell leaves him when he is a less than a year old. Hazel, Craig’s caring mother, raises him with love, yet she marries Vern, a hard man who physically, sexually, and verbally abuses Craig throughout his childhood. Unfortunately, in the years before Craig turns 40 he sees his birth father only eight times. Determined to prove he can rise up to become a quality
Our first stop was an envisioned replica of what the Lee’s apartment would have probably resembled. The designers had created the interior with an early 1940’s theme and asked the previous renters how they had the décor arranged. I personally pictured the walls more lively and upbeat, with posters and paintings, even though it was a miserable place for Henry. The tense, misunderstood conversations held at the dining table could be easily visualized. I felt the anxiety in the room as Henry hurriedly buried Keiko’s family’s photographs in his bottom dresser drawer. In the end, the Lee’s apartment was very close to what I had predicted. Our second stop along the route was at the hill that Chaz had chased Henry down in the novel. Chaz had seen Henry wheeling Keiko’s photographs home during the night as he was spray painted demeaning messages on Japanese storefronts in Nihonmachi. Henry had to jump onto his wagon, for it was going too fast, and then he began to rocket down the South King Street hill. He had claimed that the hill was so enormously steep that he could not control the wagon. I thought that Henry was just over exaggerating because it might have felt that steep to him, but when I saw the hill in person, I knew he was telling the truth. Never could I imagine even biking down the incline, let alone incontrollable wagon-riding. Our final, impactful point during the walking tour was the liveliness of Chinatown versus Japantown. In Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, after the internment of the Japanese in Nihonmachi, Henry and Sheldon noticed that is was like a total ghost town. Since the Chinese were evacuated and Chinatown was neighboring Japantown, Chinatown was still buoyant and full of people. Even nowadays, Chinatown bustles and thrives with roaming tourists, while Japantown is not as
“If the human race didn’t remember anything it would be perfectly happy" (44). Thus runs one of the early musings of Jack Burden, the protagonist of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. Throughout the story, however, as Jack gradually opens his eyes to the realities of his own nature and his world, he realizes that the human race cannot forget the past and survive. Man must not only remember, but also embrace the past, because it teaches him the truth about himself and enables him to face the future.
...an forget” to poignantly highlight the protagonist’s struggle to reclaim these memories. The protagonist’s suggestion to his brother, “We can find a new place” metaphorically represents recognition that he is unable to reignite his passion for the river. Like Billy, the protagonist must re-establish his personal sense of belonging as he begins his journey into adulthood. Therefore, experiences can initiate change contributing to one’s understanding and relationship with people and the environment.
Cho poked his head in the room a couple of times and looked around before exiting and entering a different room. The first shots were heard across the hall, in the hydrology class. It sounded like a nail gun or hammer hitting concrete blocks.
This is an odd little book, but a very important one nonetheless. The story it tells is something like an extended parablethe style is plain, the characters are nearly stick figures, the story itself is contrived. And yet ... and yet, the story is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking because the historical trend it describes is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking.
Machine Gun fire blasts over your head while your hiding in your home, the only protection available. A slight whistle begins in the distance but it soon becomes closer and closer, its sound becomes louder and more intense with every inch of ground that it covers. Then as soon as it started the whistle becomes an explosion-killing half of your friends and destroying any-thing in its path. The end is near as your town is conquered and you think there is nobody left to fight. But is there? This is a short description of what the townspeople of a small European town may have heard the day their town was seized by the German army in John Steinbeck's novel The Moon is Down (1942).
The poem “Alzheimer’s” by Kelly Cherry explains how glorious a man’s life was before a brain harming disease became a factor within it. Alzheimer’s is a disease that slowly causes one’s brain to deteriorate, to slowly forget about the past, and can even cause people to forget how to breathe or walk. The setting of the poem takes place at a house in which a man, the main character, is returning home after suffering problems caused by Alzheimer’s. According to the poem “Alzheimer’s”, the man’s memory was becoming cloudy but fragments of the past stayed within his mind because he “remembers the walkway he built between the front room and the garage.” Cherry utilizes words describing the man’s life, making strong comparisons between the present
My day was going well. I devoured a big breakfast, my brother, for once, got out of the shower quick, and no major assignment was pending. Life was very, very good. Then life began to fall into oblivion. I saw on the board in the front of Mrs. Smith's room the journal entry for the day. It was about what would I write about in a narrative essay. Hope faded away. Somewhere on the planet a nuclear bomb went. An earthquake struck in some unknown place on the Earth. A volcano erupted on Jupiter's moon Io and killed a bunch of Ionians. Somebody's red rose just wilted and the petals fell onto the ground. The end of the world was indeed upon us. My jaw dropped and warning bells went off in my head. I went completely and utterly blank. I tried as hard as I could to write my journal. Channel One came on and talked about a nuclear bomb going off in India that caused an earthquake that somehow caused a volcano to erupt on Io (that killed a bunch of aliens). My jaw dropped once again. It was now the floor. As I was finishing my journal, Mrs. Smith went to the front of the room and talked about, du du du, narrative papers. She gave us a cold, white study guide that gave me no hope for survival. She then gave us another evil sheet of pap...
The faded voices of choir singers are muffled by a roaring explosion. The sounds from the crumbling building spread down the block. Worn-down bricks, knocked out from underneath each another. Shards of colored glass, shot into the air. Chucks of wood and rubbish litter the sidewalk. Thick smoke and fearful screams saturate the air. A mother’s worse nightmare.
The setting is rather an old one with more of a journey partaken by a family from a more peaceful area to turbulent zones. It is further characterized with the description of the exact localities involved in the story, which appear to mirror a consistent deterioration in the level of hopes throughout the text. Prior to setting for the journey, the misgivings and lack of definite settling on the precise route to take for a family vacation is evident. It is followed by the journey, which further seems boring for the characters. An example is “when there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud and making the other two guess what shape it suggested” (223). It is evident that the children got jaded. At The Tower, the environment was relatedly expressionless, and the journey immediately before the accident was rather boring too. All these are crafts to the theme in the
This short story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. It is unclear to the readers how the world got to be this way. This story takes place four years after all this chaos began. The narrator does an excellent job setting the scene throughout the story using lots of details. It is revealed throughout the story that it takes place during